ITZDAPAPPARAZI's GaRdEn

My garden is quite large but a lot of it kind of takes care of itself. The weather has been unkind for a long time lately, and last weekend was the first time in a long time I have been able to start getting it back to looking like it is cared for. I tend to like the jungle look though. I am situated in the south west of the North Island of New Zealand. Weather is not that extreme. Frosts in winter sometimes, summers can be dry but not scorching. Most the time the garden is not too badly affected by climate.

A lot of my garden is easy care, a large part of it is planted in native trees. These dip down a bank and then there is a row of pines at the back which is the boundary between garden and paddock. It is fairly well established now and does not require much care, every so often I zip around with the weed-eater. In the beginning it was a lot of work nurturing the seedlings and baby trees. Alot of it came down to survival of the fittest and trying again. The natives attract a few species of native birds, such as tuis, wood pigeons and fantails. The work was all well worth it just to see the bird life and seasonal changes in the trees.

Fantails are pretty cute, they flit around after you looking in disturbed ground for insects etc to eat. I was lucky to get this photo. Usually they dance around in the air and dont stay still for long at all.

 

this is the native area

If you are interested in attracting birds to your garden there are books and websites about what you can do to lure them in. One simple idea I just read is this. Find some pine cones which are open and attach string so you can hang it from a tree. Smear a mixture of peanut butter and rolled oats in the open parts of the cone. It should attract small birds such as waxeyes. (I don't think the bird population here has discovered my cones yet! )

 

 

 

 

   

Other parts of the garden are shown here. A row of camelias are a break from lawn to paddock at one part. Along one fence is a salvia hedge, I just cut it back 2 weeks ago. It needs to be cut back to almost ground level every year because it is such a rapid and rampant grower. But mid spring and all of summer it is lovely with masses of cornflower blue colour flowers. It attracts lots of bees. Apparently there is a world shortage of bees so do plant anything that will attract bees. I do not know how true this is..but I heard that if there were no bees, then the human race would die off in 4 years. Every species co-exists.

The white thing there is my cat, he is deaf. I can mow around him while he sleeps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old shed is where the fire wood and junk is. There is a pale pink old-fashioned rambling rose that climbs over the shed and in summer it is in full bloom and looks lovely. And then of course there is the compost and worm area, the worm farm under the blue plastic cover is new and there is another blog about making that. I do have a vegetable garden too, but that is such an embarrassing mess I decided not to include that here. The vege garden is my NEXT project. The soil here dries out quickly as it is close to the river. It can be good in that it drains quickly when there is a lot of rain, like we have just had. But in summer it gets very dry. I try not to water too much because some plants can adapt to dryness if you do not baby them too much. I water when plants look like death.